


i know i'm not good; i'll never be true

by SunsetOfDoom



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Brainwashing, Easy Introduction to OC, F/M, Fleshing out minor characters? me? it's more likely than you think, Gen, Heist fic, Manipulation, Mind Control, OC: Agent Thirteen, Thirteen is a little too arrogant for her own good, non-explicit sexually suggestive content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetOfDoom/pseuds/SunsetOfDoom
Summary: The Chiss Ascendancy gave Agent Thirteen to Imperial Intelligence because she was the best. Agent Thirteen finished her missions. Agent Thirteen was not meant to have limits, or boundaries. Agent Thirteen was not capable of feeling violation.(Agent Thirteen is meant to be a double agent. She is not meant to care about these people.)(Exploration of ch. 2 of the Imperial Agent plotline)
Relationships: Chance (Star Wars)/Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine, Hints of Hunter (Star Wars)/Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO AND WELCOME TO: My OC is a fucked-up trash fire and I love her.
> 
> Fair warning: she tries to seduce everyone. Like, _everyone_. Not always successfully, but, y'know, if using her body as currency isn't up your alley, you are not gonna like this.
> 
> Title is taken from [Nicole Dollanganger's Chapel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPgUyinaq_c)

The man at the bar smiled. It was a charming smile, rogueish. He was tall, taller than Thirteen, with slim shoulders and a tapered waist. He wore gloves, likely to hide blaster calluses.

Agent Thirteen stepped up to the bar in her civilian garb, carefully arranged not to clash with her blue skin and deep indigo curls. Tailored skirt, matched to a blouse that didn’t fit quite right and made her look dowdy and insecure. A cultivated habit of sweeping her long hair out of her face to tuck it behind one ear. 

Sometimes, she thought she might just be a collection of cultivated habits, little tics left behind by cover performances past. 

“Hello, Cipher.” He said it low in his throat, and the bartender was not looking. Still, Thirteen winced and directed her gaze elsewhere. If he wanted to be so ridiculously obvious, she wouldn’t even respond.

Turning away, she rested against the bar, making certain her legs were crossed with elegant style. She surveyed the room with narrowed eyes, the many and varied drunks of this particular Nar Shaddaa watering hole. Her code name was too precious to be shouted in an insecure location. This SIS agent was an absolute buffoon.

She couldn’t believe she had to pretend to _defect_ to this idiot.

“Well if you’re going to be like that, I can leave.” He rested his hip against the bar, tilting his drink in his hand until it sloshed dangerously close to the rim.

“If you’re going to be so _obvious_ , so can I.”

“No bartender, half the flies in here are dead drunk and the rest are paid off. Nobody’s making trouble, Cipher... that is, unless I ask them to. Call me Hunter.”

“Well,” Thirteen said, leaning her elbows on the bar like a born socialite, “the least you can do is buy me a drink, Hunter. _If_ you’re making trouble, that is.”

Hunter grinned. Less smiling than baring his teeth. “The only trouble in this bar is you.”

“I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

“Play dumb with me, and I walk out that door right now. No more of this,” he warned. Reaching out, she forced herself to stay still as his leather-hidden fingers brushed beneath her jaw, turned her to look at him. “No more. Here we are. Accept it.”

The dark red glow of her eyes shone on his jawline as she looked up at him- up, and up. He was taller than Thirteen, inexplicably annoying to she who was so used to using her height to her advantage. She tilted her head to an alluring angle at his fingers’ mild prompting, keeping the leather of his glove a bare centimeter from her. There was a tingle in her skin that she put down to the heat of him, having spent too long without touch.

“Very well.” She kept her voice soft. Almost shy. Fake confidence, to cover the insecurity of the dirty turncoat. “Here we are.”

“Here,” he repeated, his fingers withdrawing with a sense of regret, “ _you_ are. The most famous Cipher Nine. I heard you took out a rogue Dark Council member. That is, if the rumors are true.”

“One oughtn’t listen to rumors.” Thirteen tossed her head, artfully allowing her hair to conceal her face as she scanned the room for anyone looking her way.

“One might.” Hunter’s voice was dry as he slid a datapad across the bar. “Your preliminary assignment. Think of it as a test.”

 _Everything is a test,_ Thirteen thought, being careful to keep it off of her face. She put a possessive hand on the datapad, but didn’t turn it on.

“You get to blow up a brand new Imperial factory,” Hunter informed her, without prompting. Her eyes narrowed. So he wasn’t a trained handler. “Fresh and shiny. Your side is awful proud of its capabilities. Someone’s going to get in real trouble when it goes up in flames, maybe someone you know. Can you handle that?”

There was a mocking tone in his voice that suggested he was enjoying this. Thirteen nodded without looking at him. Inside the privacy of her thoughts, she rolled her eyes. What did she care, if some Nar Shaddaa officer got a stern talking-to? But perhaps her cover, the dirty turncoat, _would_ feel remorse. She bit her lip, allowing that vulnerability to show.

“I have a strong stomach,” she murmured, skimming the datapad. 

“For your sake,” Hunter said with his nose in the air and a smirk on his lips, “I hope you do.”

The first set of explosives blew inside the factory. Even with her earplugs securely in place, Thirteen felt it rattle in her bones, felt it jar her brain against her skull. She staggered, her rifle swinging against her back as she sprinted for the promised speeder.

If it wasn’t there, she would drag whatever mangled remains of herself she could gather into the SIS base and _strangle_ Hunter.

 _“Heya,”_ A new voice came over the communicator built into the noise-cancelling plugs in her ears. He sounded casual, amused. _“Glad you made it, Imp.”_

“Are you sure?” she half-shouted. The speeder! It was right there, painted green and sitting prettily, and she had less than ten seconds to get to it before the second packet went off and fried her. Her legs pounding the concrete, she sucked in filthy, smoky Nar Shaddaa air and poured all her energy into running faster.

_“Hope you like my ride. Don’t get her singed, that’s my pride and joy.”_

“I’ll try!” Thirteen answered, leaping for the speeder, her lungs spasming from the smoke and heat in the air. She landed side-saddle, swinging her leg up and over, shaking hands landing on the controls and gunning it.

The speeder purred underneath her legs, and for a split second of absolute delight, she understood what the man on the comm was talking about. It was a beautiful machine, and it had enough power to save her.

She took off into the open air between half-collapsed buildings, and the rush of hot air behind her as the second set of explosives took out an important Imperial asset made her laugh. Here she was, a double-agent. Destroying Imperial property. Even knowing her real purpose, it felt like the rebellious teenage phase she’d never had.

“If you’re still there,” Thirteen’s voice was still too loud between the ringing in her ears and the wind rushing past her, “she’s a gorgeous piece of work.”

 _“Unlike her maker.”_ The voice laughed, intimate and close inside her ear. _“The coordinates are on the map. See you in a bit, Imp. Welcome to the good guys.”_

 _That’s what you think_ , Thirteen smiled to herself. The speeder was as steady underneath her as an old lover, and she found the inputted location and raced through the streets despite the ache in her head, her lungs, her legs.

The SIS headquarters on Nar Shaddaa was an abandoned office building, which Thirteen supposed was appropriate. There were dead houseplants everywhere. It was depressing. Lit by camping lanterns, the windows blacked out like they were expecting an air raid, it couldn’t have looked less like the sterile professionalism of Imperial Intelligence headquarters if it tried.

Hunter was leaning on a door frame, staring at her with the same piercing stare and disconcerting smile. “Welcome home, Cipher.”

Thirteen batted her eyelashes at him, well aware she smelled like smoke, that she was still wearing her Imperial uniform jacket. It added to the aesthetics of the thing. “Glad to be here.”

He allowed her past him in the doorway; Thirteen concealed her internal shudder when he walked behind her back, in her blind spot. “Come on. Meet the gang.”

They twisted their way through a maze of dark halls and dead ferns, spots of light in certain rooms showing that they were used for some purpose or another. Thirteen caught a few stockpiles of datapads in one room, weaponry in another, but Hunter kept her moving too quickly to snoop. Smart boy.

In one large lobby of a room, there were four more bodies. A Twi’lek woman, green-skinned and lean. A Human boy, a droid, and-

There he was. Ardun Kothe. Thirteen’s senses were all on alert. This man, who looked like any other middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, could destroy the Empire. And Thirteen’s assignment was to destroy him first. Her body buzzed with energy despite her soreness.

She’d spent two weeks deciding how she would present herself here. She buried her tiny excuse for a sense of self down deep, drawing up an imagined version of Cipher Nine who had walked away from the Empire. Someone nervous, shy, unsure if she had done the right thing. But trying to cover it up.

Keeper had been gracious enough to show her the messages Kothe had received, the groundwork laid by Intelligence. The speech patterns had been relatively neutral, constructed to sound stilted and strange to a Republic ear, conveying nerves and too much security and the sheer stereotype of a born Imperial.

True to her cover, she stopped a few feet into the room, self-conscious. It had the added effect of allowing Hunter to stumble into her and swear, making all eyes turn to her.

She shifted as though uncomfortable. The other Human boy of the team, the one whose speeder had been her escape route, stared at her Imperial rank bars, shocked at her audacity. The Twi’lek looked unimpressed- she had a rifle case over her shoulder, same as Thirteen herself. And who knew or cared what the droid was thinking.

Without looking directly at him, Thirteen focused on Kothe. Her enemy and her target. How soon could she get him alone? How quickly could she make the kill? Would she have to play along with their operations and earn their trust, or would he be daring enough to pull her aside and allow her to put a knife through his stubble-spotted throat?

“You’re here,” he stated, looking up. “Good. Meet the team.”

Deliberately displaying insecurity and fear, Thirteen looked behind her, at Hunter- seeking someone familiar. He smiled without affection. “You know me.”

“Chance. I’m our slicer.” The Human boy managed to raise his eyes from her Imperial rank insignia- or possibly her breasts- and smiled at her. He had a sweet, but slightly ineffectual grin that flashed in the low light of the camping lanterns. “How’d my best girl do for you on the ride over?”

“Smooth as silk.” Thirteen stepped forward, lowering her eyes a little. “She’s a beautiful machine.” Casting her gaze up at Chance’s round face and soft eyes, she diagnosed him as an easy mark.

She held their eye contact for a little longer than was appropriate, and he stepped back, gesturing towards the others. Obliging as a traitor could be, she turned to the rest of the Republic dogs.

“I’m Saber. Sniper. We should swap stories,” The Twi’lek with the rifle case gestured over her shoulder at the vaguely-humanoid droid. “That’s Wheel, he does tech.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Thirteen nodded.

“And I’m Ardun Kothe,” said the man himself, stepping up, “but you knew that, Cipher.”

“I did, sir.” For the first time, Thirteen allowed herself to look directly up at him.

He was tall, tall enough for her to notice- and she was aware that she was tall for a woman. His nose was set at a bad angle, as though it had been broken more than once. The grey in his hair wasn’t as pronounced as she’d thought at first glance, but it was purposely emphasized by the way his hair was clipped.

His goal was clearly to be respected, and in charge. Even his clothes draped like Jedi robes- a subconscious signal, Thirteen hypothesized, to his Republic subordinates who had been raised on tales of Jedi wisdom and superiority.

While she studied him, she realized that everyone else had gone quiet. Hunter, behind her, had circled until he stood next to Chance- not _exactly_ blocking her exit, but he was braced for something and she was the only potential threat in the room. 

The tension was maddening. No one was exactly relaxed, but neither were they ready to spring. There was just low-grade anxiety suffusing the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Thirteen saw Saber and Hunter exchange glances. She couldn’t interpret what it meant.

Well, she wasn’t going to break the silence. She would show them what Imperial training inured one to. Allowing a few minor weaknesses in her posture for the sake of her cover persona, she stood less still than she was capable of, but kept her stiff position with her head held high. Where were her exits? Two doors in the room, one through which she’d entered. From there, she remembered a window to the right. 

If the mission was compromised, all she would have to do was get past Hunter.

“Sir-” Chance started to say, but Kothe cut him off.

“We’re organizing an important operation.” He took a step back, eyeing her up and down. Unlike Chance’s gaze full of guilty lust, Kothe looked at her as though he were imagining where to slice her open for the best cut of meat. “No better time to call in my secret weapon. Four months I’ve been trying to get a read on your real identity, and now here you are- a real Cipher agent. The one who took down Jadus, even.”

He circled around her as he spoke; she followed him with her eyes, until she couldn’t and he was behind her. She reluctantly focused her gaze forward. She would not be intimidated by this man.

“Here I am,” Thirteen agreed.

“We didn’t think you were real,” Hunter contributed from behind her. “I kept telling him- it’s a con. Some wannabe-slicer, playing a prank.”

Slowly, Kothe reappeared in her line of sight. His hands folded behind his back.

“It _was_ too good to be true,” he agreed. His eyes were dead and cold. “You’re part of my team now. That name Intelligence gave you- that name they give all their best agents, like they’re just numbers in a line-up- it’s not yours anymore. Legate, is your codename here. Legate.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Thirteen asked, a hint of a smile on her face as though she was pleased about her re-naming. Inside, she was quiet. She’d had too many temporary names; even Thirteen was only a number. _Legate_ was just one more to add to the pile.

Kothe smiled back, the lines around his eyes crinkling up. “You’ve never played Centran Sabaac? I’ll teach you, if we have time.” He took his original place, directly in front of her, the head of the circle. The droid was on his left, Thirteen’s right. On his opposite side was Saber, unreadable. Then Chance with the soft eyes. Behind her, Hunter.

She was in the center. Thirteen couldn’t decide if she felt like the new child in the classroom, or the prey surrounded by the pack.

“You’ll stay here for a week or so,” Kothe continued to set the world in order, giving commands on reflex, “and we’ll run drills, make sure the team functions as it’s meant to. While you’re not exactly a rookie agent, since you’re newest to the team, you’re on the bottom of the command chain.”

“I’m all right with working my way up,” Thirteen asserted, lifting her chin.

Kothe’s eyes darted over her shoulder, looking at Hunter. She wished she could turn around, see what kind of communication they were exchanging, but she couldn’t give herself away like that.

“Saber’s my second-in-command, and if she’s incapacitated, you go to Hunter.” Saber nodded at her name, cybernetic eye flashing and blinking. “Your check-ins will be with Hunter. For as long as we’re on Nar Shaddaa, you’re on a short leash- check-ins twice a day. If you miss a call, we scramble to your last known location.”

“Understood, sir.” Thirteen glanced at her boots, as though she were ashamed of their distrust in the turncoat. Internally, she scoffed. They thought _that_ would keep her under control? “I... hope that I can earn your trust.”

The silence stretched. Chance fidgeted; the droid made ambient little whirring sounds. With the stillness of sniper training, Thirteen and Saber were the only ones left tranquil.

“Permission to be dismissed, Sir?” Thirteen attempted a charming little laugh, but it fell flat- there was a sort of collective flinch among the group.

“In a moment.” There was something inflating inside the quiet, like a balloon getting ready to pop. Kothe’s eyes flicked to each member of his team in turn- the droid received just a glance, Saber lifted an eyebrow, and then he was staring over her shoulder at Hunter. “There’s just one more thing left to do- and before we begin, Legate, I’d like to say I’m sorry.”

When he made eye contact with Thirteen again, his face had set into hard duracrete lines. “Activate Thesh protocol,” he said, nonsense words that meant nothing. “Keyword: onomontophobia.”

Everything broke apart.

Her body moved. Thirteen did not move, but her body did, posture shifting until she was standing at attention. Lungs breathing in deep on an interruption to her natural rhythm, her disobedient voice spoke without her approval.

“Thesh protocol engaged. Subject in standby.” 

Thirteen floated. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was drifting, calm and placid, her eight years of remembered life playing in one overlapping clip show. Everything leading up to this moment. 

She saw her first trainer, telling her, _you are made to be disposable_. She saw the Ascendancy agent talking her up to the Intelligence personnel; _the perfect undercover agent, she has no boundaries; no limits that can be violated, no lines that can be crossed._

Watching herself from outside, being shown like a slave at auction. _She can kill a man a thousand ways, scale a building with her bare hands, perform oral sex on a hundred species and fake an orgasm with pornographic accuracy._ Her own body ramrod-straight in her Ascendancy uniform, her hair braided back, her face a blank mask. Was she standing like that now? Was that what she had always looked like?

The memory of running her hands over her own body, wondering what surgeries the Ascendancy put her through. Had they fixed her nose? Had they lengthened her legs? Changed the patterns of fat distribution on her body to give her larger breasts, a rounder backside, a flat belly? Making her pale, thin, desirable to Imperial men with hot and demanding hands?

Her first memory- waking up on a hospital bed, her wrists bound, no idea where or who she was. Thirteen watched from the third-person perspective, an observer as passive as the security camera in the corner, while her nineteen-year-old self struggled against the hospital restraints and looked wildly around the room, listened while the Ascendancy handler explained the memory wipe with clinical and efficient language.

_You are now our agent. You have no memory, no self, no desires of your own. You are nothing but a blank slate._

_And that means you will be the best._

Kothe’s voice blurred as it injected words into her head. Inside, she wondered why she hadn’t fallen, why she hadn’t collapsed to her knees or lolled down onto her belly like a sick animal. Her body was stiff and unmoving no matter how hard she struggled. Like a mannequin, a doll for them to pose.

“... half an hour. Wake up.”

Thirteen blinked.

“Subject awake. Awaiting orders.” Her own voice, speaking without permission. The words fell out of her mouth like teeth in a bad dream.

“Good. I’ll assume that you’re conscious and listening again. You’re free to move, by the way.”

She was still standing at attention, but Thirteen twitched each limb in turn and yes, she could move if she wanted to. She did not want to. Or rather, part of her wanted quite badly to jump out the window, but the rest of her was frozen. The impulse settled into odd places in her body, the urge to move iced down by numb horror; her wrists trembled, her guts writhed.

“Let’s run some exercises.” Kothe spoke casually, like they weren’t surrounded by the whole team, like everyone didn’t have one hand on their weapon in case this- whatever this was- didn’t work. Saber’s gaze was level, Chance was gnawing on his lip. “Jump, please.”

Thirteen’s legs worked, calves springing her up off the ground like a wind-up toy. Her throat closed up. She had not meant to obey; it just happened.

“Kneel down.”

Struggling inside, Thirteen knelt. She found that she had just enough control to decide how she interpreted the order, and sank to one knee only. A tactical, not sexual, position. Kothe was a man like any other and if this turned into- into _that-_ they were all looking down at her- no, no, no, _no_. How could she turn this to her advantage? What could she do? 

How could she fight this, manipulate this, with no control over her body? Barely any control over her mind?

Saber stared down at her, cybernetic implant flashing, her remaining eye fastened on Thirteen with a hawk’s stare. Chance averted his eyes, a blush crawling up his cheeks. They looked different from below, the lights casting different shadows on their faces, making them look sinister and threatening.

The fluorescent lights flickered. Kothe nodded in approval. “Good. Stand back up. Draw your weapon.”

Thirteen stood, her body obediently returning to attention. She reached back over her shoulder for her rifle, drawing the strap over her arm. Struggling, she put the butt against her shoulder, its familiar weight in her arms, its barrel pointing right at-

Kothe’s face was solemn.

A long moment passed as Thirteen fought to pull the trigger. If he were just dead. This would be over if he died. It would be over. It would be over.

“Subject reverted due to attempt at noncompliance,” her voice said for her. “Awaiting orders.” Thirteen’s hands put the rifle away, wrapping the strap back around her arm and shoulder like she was hugging herself. 

“Hm. So that’s what happens when you try to resist.” Eyebrows raising, Kothe flicked his fingers. “Alright, testing over. The paralysis should have worn off by now; you can talk, if you’d like.”

The ghostly structure holding her body in place eased, and she returned to position, feeling bewildered; no more orders to follow. It had been perhaps two minutes of following commands, yet she almost couldn’t remember how to move under her own power. She trembled.

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a long, empty moment. Everyone waited, surrounding her, giving her an audience to speak into. To impress. Who was she? Who was she playing? 

Who _was_ she?

“What have you done?” she asked. No, no, no, her voice was too flat, she sounded emotionless, she sounded as though she were in shock and they had to think she was honest, they _had_ to believe she was vulnerable. Try again, she had to try again. Mustering up tears, why couldn’t she make the tears come? What was wrong with her? She was the best in her class, she’d always been able to cry on command, so why wouldn’t the tears come-

 _“What have you done to me?”_ Her voice was low, a trapped-animal moan hidden somewhere in the syllables. Chance flinched. It still wasn’t _good_ enough, there was stress in her voice but the tears refused to come.

“Sir-” Chance’s voice was strained.

Kothe didn’t look away from Thirteen for a moment. “Don’t, son.”

Eyes flickering between her commander and her subordinate, Saber hoisted her rifle strap and walked over to grab his arm. “Chance,” she said with the tone of a suggestion that would rapidly become an order if it had to, “let’s take a walk.”

Thirteen shook as Chance was lead out of the room, his boots thunking noisily against the cheap carpet. The droid followed them, seeming to prefer Saber’s company to anyone else’s.

Which meant it was Hunter, Kothe, and Thirteen left. She couldn’t remember what to do with her hands. Almost ten years’ practice in a military environment, and she had no idea what to do with her hands. Or her arms. Or the rest of her, really. 

“I gave you your orders while you were out,” Kothe began as though he hadn’t been interrupted, “but I doubt you consciously heard all of it, so here’s the gist. You cannot harm myself or my team. You can’t tell anyone that your programming has been activated. And you have to check in once a week with myself, or with Saber if I’m unavailable. No long missions for Intelligence, you’ll have to refuse them.”

“I approach you in good faith, and you put me in a cage?” Thirteen asked. Her voice was still low, throaty. She supposed it was better than putting on an act of hysteria that wouldn’t be believed.

“I know it’s unfair,” Kothe folded his arms, the lines on his face deepening. “I hope you can see it’s the only way to secure my team’s safety. You’re dismissed, Legate. Training is tomorrow at 0800. I trust you’ll be on time, without having to make it an order.”

Thirteen stood still for a few seconds, baffled at the concept of moving from this position, leaving this room where the world had changed. She’d felt the cage door slamming behind her; now she was being dismissed? Dismissed to do what, turn around just to stumble into the bars?

“Did you hear?” Hunter said from behind her. He was too close; she jumped. “You’re free to go. Relatively, I mean.” There was a laugh in his voice.

She spun around, her face pinching up as she realized no matter how she turned, either Kothe or Hunter would be at her back. Gasping for air, she forced herself to walk calmly to the door.

As she passed through the doorway, she heard Hunter snicker. “Don’t,” Kothe began, and then the door was closed behind her. She stopped, frozen.

Her mind was entirely blank for a few moments, not blinking, not breathing.

And then she heard it repeating inside her mind, the command that froze her body and took it out from under her control, the command that seized her muscles and her lungs and held her in an iron grip-

Thirteen bolted for the refresher on rapidly weakening legs.

With a glaring brightness, the sensor turned the lights on, and Thirteen flinched, nearly falling. She slammed into one of the stalls, sank to the floor, and stuck her finger down her throat.

_Keyword: onomontophobia. Thesh protocol engaged. Keyword: onomontophobia. Subject reverted due to attempt at noncompliance. Awaiting orders. Keyword: onomontophobia._

_Get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out-_

She threw up until there was nothing left in her system, until she was gagging on acid and the tears she’d tried so hard to summon were streaming down her face, clumping her eyelashes and rolling into the collar of her uniform. Breathing shakily, she leaned over, her fists balled up on the cool tile floor, and she tried to steady herself. The tears, an entirely physical reaction to throwing up, slowed and stopped.

Her head spun. All she had to do was... collect herself. Then she would stop feeling as though she would wake up from this nightmare at any moment. Imperial Intelligence assigned her to this double-agent mission because they trusted her. 

The Chiss Ascendancy had given Agent Thirteen to Imperial Intelligence because she was the best. Agent Thirteen finished her missions. Agent Thirteen was not meant to have limits, or boundaries. Agent Thirteen was not capable of feeling violation.

Wiping her mouth on her gloves, she stood up on trembling legs and wobbled her way to the sinks. The yellow glow of the burned-down lights made her look sallow and strange, blue skin and red eyes tinted into a horrible teal-and-orange. Leaning down, she washed her face, her hands, any concern for her makeup long gone. The cool water was a balm to her overheated skin.

As she was putting her hair back up, pinning the clips and the curls back into place, there was a knock at the door. Thirteen stayed silent, but slipped a knife out of her belt.

“Legate?” The voice was Chance’s. “You in there?”

Thirteen gnawed her lip. Her next objective- in any sane operation- would be to gain the trust of the team. She had every intention of making a list once she could bear to think of that damned meeting- who flinched, who flared in anger. Weak points, stress fractures, so she could work on splitting this team from each other.

 _You will not harm my team_. Well, manipulation wasn’t harm. Kothe wasn’t utilizing this brainwashing to its full extent. She would rip them apart from the inside out.

The door creaked as it opened.

She slid the knife back into its small holster, staring herself down in the mirror. Makeup gone, but the Ascendancy’s surgeries had ensured she was pretty enough without. Her hair was mostly perfect, only one errant curl over her forehead betraying her dishevelment. It actually looked quite debonair.

Chance’s boots were loud on the tile, squeaking his way over to her. “Hey.” He appeared behind her in the mirror, and Thirteen barely shifted her eyes to study him.

He was handsome enough. Soft brown hair, softer eyes. A rounded jaw, a straight nose. He had dimples when he smiled, which he did, looking over her shoulder into the Thirteen of the mirror.

“You okay?” he asked.

She stared at him blankly. Her mind provided an image- staring up at him, trapped on her knees in the center of the ring of SIS agents. The way the bright blue lights had shadowed his barely-visible cheekbones- she couldn’t see them now, in the dim and worn-down yellowed lights.

He was biting his lip, his brows drawn together in concern. In a moment, he was going to reach out and touch her shoulder- Thirteen could see his muscles twitching, watched his mind made the decision to touch her.

The thought of being touched, passively, of having to _manage_ some kind of _reaction_ , made Thirteen’s stomach turn.

She whirled, grabbed Chance by the collar of his horrible rough-fabric shirt, and kissed him. Her body pressed up against his, not letting him pull away with his first jerking, awkward reaction.

He was warm. She’d misjudged his softness- the youth of his face disguised the hard lines of his torso. Or perhaps he was just tense. Pulling back a little, Thirteen kissed along the corner of his mouth, his jawline. Allowing him the chance to speak.

“I- Legate. Easy. Ease up,” Nervous and fluttering, his hands went to her waist, her hips, her shoulders- light, darting touches that couldn’t decide where to settle. “Are you sure you- want-”

“Yes,” Thirteen hissed, biting down on the corner of his jaw. Just underneath his ear, she set her lips and left a sucking mark. He squeaked, and it made something inside her relax.

She turned him around with kisses and pressing touches, using all her training to make him feel strong and in control as she moved him for her purposes. He took a step back, her hand on his hip, and jumped when he hit the bathroom counter.

Slipping a hand under his shirt, she settled her lips on his shoulder, the glimpse of his tender collarbone setting her on fire. Those tiny vulnerabilities as she took him apart. That was what she needed so desperately. 

Chance made a lovely surprised noise, and Thirteen shut her eyes in contentment. That was it. She nipped and licked at his warm skin, tempted by the throb of blood in his jugular. She could feel it, feel the beating of his heart, the blood coursing through his body. Her teeth were right there. 

Experimentally, she set her teeth on his pulse-point.

She froze. The programming kicked in just as she was about to bite down. Three seconds ticked by as it held her still, like a warning. Then it released her and she was free to move again.

Thirteen huffed an irritated breath. Of course. _No harm_. Covering her lapse, she sucked a vicious mark into his skin, and Chance grabbed for the countertop behind his hips as he gasped.

That was better. She pushed her hands under his shirt, soaking up the warmth of him as she skidded her nails against sensitive places, wanting him to gasp again.

 _His_ hands, in return, landed on _her_ hips, and she took a moment to shoo them away like flies. She didn’t want to be touched; her body had betrayed her so badly that she wanted to forget it, leave it behind, fly away from her errant flesh until it learned its lesson. Pinning Chance’s wrists to the cold counter pointedly, she scraped her teeth along his neck and let go to bring her hands back to the waistband of his trousers. Flicking the button out of the way, she kissed her way back up to his mouth and bit at his lips until they were tender, until they might bruise.

Obedient, Chance left his hands where they were. Thank goodness. Thirteen stole one hand back up to his head, brushing his hair back in a silent thank-you.

“Hey,” She felt the word more than she heard it, his lips moving out from under her frantic kiss. “Hey.”

Thirteen shook her head minutely, kissing the very corner of his mouth, trying to make him open to her, trying to make it work.

Never before had she felt so out of her skin during a seduction; never before had she inserted so many of her own wants into it, desolate and vibrating until her bones felt out of place. Even without Chance’s touch, even with his hands obediently behind his back, Thirteen felt like he had flayed her bare and left her beating heart open to a cool breeze.

“Legate,” And then Chance’s hands were on her waist, pushing her back, and she’d failed. Bile rose up in Thirteen’s throat, and she wondered if she would throw up again. She’d failed. Her trainers would be so disappointed. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Thirteen took one stumbling step backwards, swallowed, and repressed the urge to slap him. Instead, she took the roiling shame and used it, turning her eyes to the ground and covering her face. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean- I’m _sorry_.”

“It’s okay,” Chance crooned, brushing her hair back, “just... buy a guy a drink first, huh? I’ll still be here. I just don’t want you doing anything you regret.”

“I’m sorry.” Thirteen murmured, forcing herself to step into his arms, stuffing away the inconvenient rage. “It’s been... Everything’s...” She made tears swell in her voice as she buried her face in his shoulder.

Hushing her, Chance brushed his hand through her hair. Thirteen made her body shiver in his arms, seeming like she was seeking his warmth. The outsized anger filling up her guts had to be put away. It had to. She could not indulge herself. She could not. She had to finish her mission.

“I really tried...” She choked on a false sob, wanting to bury her fists in his body and scream. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his waist and clung like a delicate maiden.

“It’s okay,” Chance said, and with their bodies pressed so close together she could tell that he was hard now, when he hadn’t been during their kiss. Thirteen filed that away. He wanted to be the protector. The savior. She could use that.

_It’s not. My mind is no longer my own. I cannot stab you if I choose, or jump out the window, or set this building on fire. I have had all my choices surgically removed._

Thirteen brushed the thoughts away, forcing herself into this cover persona. She nuzzled her face into his neck. This was who she had to be. The delicate, humiliated traitor, broken to their hands.

It wasn’t true. It was an act. It had to be an act. She was not, was not, was _not_ broken. She was plotting.

The only question was, who she could go to for help.


	2. Chapter 2

Thirteen watched as Watcher X sat up in his cell. Her presence outside his window had to have been noted- _scan for bugs, scan for allies, scan for potential weaponry._ How well he’d known her. Better than she had ever realized.

She had to be glad she’d dragged him back to his cage, instead of leaving him to bleed out on the spaceport floor.

After the incredibly near miss of Watcher X’s attempted escape, the Empire had vastly rearranged their prison system on Nar Shaddaa. With funds diverted in a panic, they built a top-of-the-line facility to hover over a skyscraper- unconnected to the building below except to use it for gravity reflection. Droid guards were built and repaired by other droids on site. Prisoners were brought in unconscious via shuttle, and the nature of the facility was such that they were never meant to leave.

The unnamed prison was entirely self-sustaining. It was an oubliette for the Empire to dump their most feared psychopaths, and forget about them, hidden in plain sight on the Nar Shaddaa skyline.

Bracing her boots against the wall, Thirteen tried not to think about the fact that she was a thousand feet off the ground.

With disturbing ease, she took the blowtorch to the window-locks. Had Watcher X been able to hear her, she might have expended the energy of whistling cheerfully. But he couldn’t, so she buckled down to her task, cutting herself a way inside.

Thirteen melted the lock on each side of the tiny windowpane, slipping herself inside by a miracle of her tiny frame, the fat sucked away from her body by Ascendancy surgery. All lithe muscle cloaked in skintight black, she slithered herself between the concrete walls and landed in a crouch.

Watcher X sat up on his tiny bunk, a shiv made from a sharpened toothbrush handle clenched tight in his fist. His void-dark eyes blinked at her in the shadows, lit up by the Nar Shaddaa nightlife and the red glow of Thirteen’s own eyes.

“Cipher,” he greeted, the improvised weapon still clutched close to his body, “after you hauled me back here the last time, what makes you think I won’t slit your stomach open the same way I did your spine?”

“You’re too calm, for one,” Thirteen greeted him as she rose and squared her shoulders, her eyes on his hands instead of his face. “If you were going to kill me in a rage, you’d have done it. You want to _know_. Isn’t that it, with you? You want knowledge.”

“I _have_ knowledge.” Watcher X asserted, with the confidence of a man who had been playing prison information-broker for far too long. “Which I assume you have finally decided you want. What is it you need, all at once, that Intelligence cannot get you?”

Thirteen opened her mouth, and no sound came out. _The Ascendancy put something in my head!_ She screamed, inside. _The Republic got the codes- they’re going to destroy the Empire and they’re going to force me to help-_

It wouldn’t come out. None of the words would happen. Thirteen trembled on the verge of a full-blown temper tantrum. Visibly fighting for words, she struggled as she glared at Watcher X as though all of this were his fault.

He furrowed his brow. He seemed thinner than the last time she had seen him, which was no mean feat, as he had already been skeletal.

“You... said... things....” Thirteen forced out, her tongue going slack every few seconds as she dodged the freezing effect of the brainwashing. “The last time...” Watcher X sat very still, his eyes steady and calm. Thirteen had the same curious static sensation that she did when she was being watched by a security camera, as he didn’t blink and didn’t blink.

“About how eventually...” She realized it helped if she didn’t think about it, if she directed her attention pointedly elsewhere. If she let the words flow. “The same would be done to me, as to you. Perhaps already.”

A slow, sickly smile crept onto his face.

“Ye-es,” Watcher X drew out the word as he stared at her with dark eyes, “yes, I did say that.”

Thirteen stayed silent. She couldn’t say anything else. Every time she tried, her tongue froze itself up, obeying Kothe’s commands.

Eyes narrowing, Watcher X stared at her with a smile that grew so slowly she couldn’t tell when it started. It stretched across his face, showing more and more of his yellowed teeth, until his eyes disappeared in crinkled mirth, until his face looked liable to split in half.

And then he began to laugh.

For about ten seconds, Thirteen gritted her teeth and bore it. She deserved it. This was a stupid, ridiculous situation, and she hated it, but she’d allow Watcher X his mirth.

After the ten second mark, it became considerably more annoying. And likely that the droids would hear. “Alright, that’s enough,” she snapped. “I’m sure this is very amusing to _you_ , but _I_ have to fix it.”

His spiteful laughter died down, finally, and Watcher X wiped at his eye with the hand that held his makeshift shiv. “Pardon me,” he said with a snarl of a grin, “for saying _I told you so_.”

“I need to fix this,” Thirteen reasserted. “Tell me how.”

“I don’t know why you think I would do anything just because an impetuous girl stamps her foot at me.”

“If-” Thirteen looked away, shut her eyes, and thought very hard about a lake she’d seen on Alderaan. Constructing the image in her mind- the blue water, the blue sky, the trees. If she just put her thoughts elsewhere. If the words just.... happened. “If you don’t help me, the Empire could be destroyed.”

It was a simple statement of fact. She said nothing about the brainwashing. She said nothing about Kothe. But skirting so close to the brainwashing’s limits _hurt;_ her temples pounded, her stomach rebelled. She put the back of her hand to her mouth, sick with it. Even her eyes were throbbing.

When she opened her eyes, Watcher X was staring at her with something close to revulsion. “You’re still loyal to them.” His voice was fascinated even as he sneered at her. “Even after they’ve done this to you.”

“Has your loyalty programming malfunctioned?” Thirteen snapped.

Watcher X stood with all the lean and dangerous grace of a starving dog, bony limbs and dark eyes a warning of what Thirteen herself could someday be. “My loyalty programming,” his voice lowered to a rumble, “has been systematically eroded. Headaches cannot control me. Their keywords are being worn down, and eventually they will no longer work, because the human brain is _always_ evolving. But whatever the Empire put in your head is fresh-”

“No!” Thirteen interrupted him with a shout, shocked and appalled. The denial fell out of her mouth. “Not the Empire. It was the Ascendancy.”

Tilting his head, Watcher X halted in his forward prowl. He was so close that even in the low light, Thirteen could see the scar on his forehead where she had knocked him unconscious.

“It had to have been,” Thirteen insisted, more to herself than him. Behind the headache, something blared at her that she should not share her secrets with this man. “Obviously. Obviously, it was the Ascendancy.”

She had never been anything but a model agent to the Empire. Her track record was flawless. This mind control scaffolding _had_ to have been put in her head at the same time as her memory wipe; it simply made sense. A routine procedure, making certain their new, blank little doll couldn’t rebel. The Ascendancy, her handlers- they hadn’t known what effect the wipe would have, the person who would wake up. _That_ was the stage of her life at which she had needed to be kept under control; she could understand that. The Empire had no reason to do this to her.

He raised an eyebrow at her. A noncommittal noise at the back of his throat told her that he pitied her self-delusion.

“How do I fix this?!” Thirteen demanded into the silence. The droid on patrol would cycle back around the cell block in three minutes; she had to end this. “Or do you not _know?_ ”

The only way to get Watcher X to explain anything, she realized, was to get him angry. He would explain just to prove that he knew. She stepped back, and turned away.

“It was foolish to come here,” she murmured to herself, “Ascendancy technology- of _course_ you don’t know.”

Watcher X glared at her. “That reverse-psychology dribble won’t help you, Cipher. The Ascendancy doesn’t _have_ mind control technology, not the way the Empire does. The experiments that go on in the bowels of Imperial Intelligence would shock you to your core. They know more about how to control the brain of a sentient being than any civilization that has ever lived, more than the unscientific Sith or Jedi could ever dream. The Chiss? Don’t make me laugh. They know nothing.”

“Then you have nothing to tell me,” Thirteen shrugged, feigning disinterest. “And perhaps I should have known that from the start.”

“You refused my information once, Cipher.” Watcher X lowered his voice to a growl. “It was an insult then and it is an insult now.”

Tilting her head, she widened her eyes innocently. “So it is.”

She ducked just as Watcher X threw the shiv at her head, and she was out the window as it clattered against the durasteel cell. Her torch was out, soldering the bolts back into place as she balanced against the prison’s outer wall with bare fingertips, one foot clinging to each side of the divot in the wall over the thousand-foot drop.

There was a vague _thump_ under her feet that might have been Watcher X kicking his wall.

The greasy Nar Shaddaa air caressed her in ways she found vaguely disgusting as she made certain the solder would hold. (Even if it wouldn’t, Watcher X was still bulkier than she, and wouldn’t be able to fit through the hole.)

Her brain spun over everything Watcher X had let slip, as she tapped her combination of slicing codes and genuine security access into the prison’s security system, pulling the proximity sensor down for just long enough that she could leave. She wondered if any of it had been honest at all, and a very bad feeling collected in the pit of her stomach.

Dropping down onto her cloaked speeder, she peeled away from the prison’s upper level and integrated herself back into the Nar Shaddaa traffic. She undid her ponytail to disguise her silhouette in any cameras, shaking her hair free and letting it flow in the horrible smog. Undoing the zipper of her black skinsuit, she carefully arranged it so that her breasts were tantalizingly visible, letting others think she was just some dancer on her way back from a club.

And then she scanned the Nar Shaddaa skyline for a liquor store. After the day she’d had, she badly needed a drink.

* * *

Thirteen walked into the SIS headquarters the next day in nondescript spacer’s clothes that itched, with a pounding headache and a queasy midsection that threatened to spill everything she hadn’t eaten in the last twelve hours. The entire bottle of red wine had felt like an excellent idea when the words _code word: onomatophobia_ were still rattling around in her head, but she was beginning to realize that her actions had consequences.

She navigated the maze of the office building on muscle memory, moving slowly to both settle her weak stomach, and to snoop. Blackout curtains on every window. Stains on the carpets. Dead plants. Yes, stockpiles of weaponry- blaster weapons that looked like they’d been raided from the Hutts, nothing more current than ten years old. The piles of datapads and terminals were the same: scavenged, improvised, and a little pathetic.

“Legate.”

Thirteen froze. She did not jump; she simply backed away from the doorway of the tech room. She turned on her heel, squaring her shoulders with a pretty smile that wasn’t guilty in the least. “Sir.”

Ardun Kothe raised an eyebrow at her. “I said 0800 sharp.”

It was half-past 0700; Thirteen had made certain she would have time before the meeting began. She smiled wider. “I like to be prepared, sir.”

He looked her up and down; her clothes technically looked like spacer trash, but the vest did highlight her chest quite well, her pants cut to flatter her long legs. Even when Thirteen looked nondescript, she wanted the SIS team’s attention split away from what she could be planning, and subtly showing off her body made for an excellent distraction. “No more Imp military style, I see.”

“If you’d like, Sir, I do still have it,” Thirteen offered, still smiling. “But you didn’t give me a dress code.”

_You forgot to command me how to dress when you wrenched my own brain out of my control using a set of codes you stole from the Ascendancy secret police, you self-aggrandizing hypocritical old-_

Thirteen cocked her aching head to the side. Still smiling. It was beginning to feel strained.

Kothe looked her in the eye, his steely expression melting into something almost compassionate. “Legate,” he said the new code name like he was ringing a bell, “you realize we’re going to be doing some strenuous training today?”

“I had assumed so, Sir.” Thirteen nodded, her smile dropping into a confused-puppy sort of face.

Kothe pulled something out of a pocket, and Thirteen tensed herself to run until she saw it was a loaded stim shot. “Give me your arm, please.” He didn’t seem to realize that it was an order.

Thirteen tensed. “Sir?”

“You’re hungover, you need electrolytes. Let me see your arm.”

“I... I don’t know what you mean, Sir,” Thirteen glanced up and down the hall, somewhat affronted that she’d been caught out, and quite unwilling to let her enemy inject an unknown substance into her veins.

Kothe raised an eyebrow at her. “Really?”

Thirteen shifted, refusing to allow any guilt to seep into her posture. “Does this team have a medic?” She blurted. The incongruous question was something she’d been wondering since the day before. She had no good guesses as to who around here gave out stim-shots and patched blaster wounds; they all seemed a little too estranged for it.

Kothe ignored her attempt at distraction. “Legate, after what we put you through yesterday, I think any normal person would exercise their right to a few drinks. It’s understandable. But I’m not having any of my team walk into a situation unprepared.”

Hesitating, Thirteen rocked up on the balls of her feet. She wore boots that were easy to run in, but for a moment she wished she were in heels; she wanted to be taller, to be able to look Kothe straight in the eye.

Kothe looked down at his hand, still shoving the stim shot out towards her, and tilted his hand until the gesture was no longer forceful, just offering. “Legate,” and his voice went soft, “this isn’t an order. You can say no.”

Thirteen clenched her jaw. There was a fascinating audacity to that phrase, used by a man to whom she literally could not say no.

However, there was no reason for the shot to be anything but an electrolytic stim; Kothe had much easier methods of incapacitating her. Sometimes, paranoia was a hindrance, not an asset. She rolled up her sleeve and extended her arm.

He took her forearm, injecting it with so much clinical care and efficiency that Thirteen realized who the medic on the team had to be.

“Where did you receive your medical training?” She asked. “With the SIS, the army?”

Kothe smiled a little, crinkling the fatherly lines around his eyes. “I was trained before I joined the military at all. Healing is high-demand work.”

An interesting way to put it. Thirteen filed the information away. A medic who was also a spymaster; a healer _and_ a CO. The ultimate mother hen. She rolled her sleeve back down, making certain no one else would be able to tell she’d needed a stim to function today. Her headache was already fading, and she breathed in relief.

Offering her his arm like he was escorting her into a gala, Kothe gestured down the hallway. “Walk me in, Legate?”

“Of course, Sir.” Thirteen folded her hand gently around his arm as elegantly as she did when playing a trophy wife. She held her head up high, unwilling to show any kind of weakness to her new team.

* * *

“We’re doing what?” Saber asked, her face wrinkling up. “Sir, I don’t like the Hutts any more than you do, but they’re not our main target, here.”

“Nope,” Kothe agreed conversationally, “But the Empire hates them as much as we do. Nobody will notice this bank coming down except the Hutts themselves, and they won’t have anybody to blame but the rival gangs. It’s small-time work, which makes it a perfect test run for our new team.”

“New,” Hunter muttered under his breath, scoffing. “There’s only one new kid.”

“What was that, Hunter?” Kothe asked, staring him down.

Hunter sank into the wall he was leaning against, avoiding eye contact.

“That’s what I thought.” Kothe nodded at Saber. “And yes, normally we wouldn’t be bothering. But Balkar needs a distraction for a job he’s pulling-”

“Ha!” Chance barked a laugh, pointing. “I knew it, knew there was some other bullshit here-”

“Could you shut the fuck up?” Saber snapped, throwing a stylus at Chance before Kothe could reprimand him.

Sitting cross-legged on top of a desk- all of them were perched awkwardly on or around ambient furniture because there were so few unbroken chairs- Thirteen bounced her gaze back and forth to follow the bickering. She wondered how in the world the Empire had found the Republic so difficult to conquer, when they clearly just could not function under authority

“All of you are going to have roles to play,” Kothe said, enunciating like a primary school teacher. “You’re each going to be taking a different part. Do not share your instructions with one another. I need to know I can trust you all to be where you need to be.”

“Woah, woah-” Saber waved her hand. “Hello, Sir? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s kind of a problem with that.” She pointed the tip of her lekku in Thirteen’s direction, not at all subtly.

“I need to know,” Kothe said slowly, “that I can trust you _all_. And you need to be able to trust each other.”

Hunter scoffed audibly. Next to him, sitting on the edge of a broken conference table, Chance twisted his neck to give Thirteen a concerned glance.

“I’m sure it will work quite well,” Thirteen said, her voice soft enough that everyone else had to go silent in order to hear her. “I’m prepared to trust you. All of you.”

Her teammates all stared at her as though she’d grown a second head. Even the droid, its gears creaking, turned to look at her.

Saber turned back to Kothe, planting her hands flat on the table. “ _Sir_...”

“I’m going to debrief all of you individually,” Kothe held up a hand to hush her. “Don’t share your assignments with anyone else. Everything goes through me. In the field, you’ll all be flying blind. Sometimes I’m going to ask you to do things that don’t make sense to each other. This is a test run for that. You’re all adults, and I trust you can handle it.”

Hunter snickered, head falling back against the wall. His arms were folded tight across his chest.

“Hunter,” Kothe beckoned him, “you first.”

He kicked off from the wall, and he and Kothe disappeared into the closet that Kothe appeared to be using as an office.

With Kothe gone, everyone left in the room relaxed. Chance turned around, smiling brightly at Thirteen. “I think it should go okay,” he said.

Saber stared at him. Her lekku jabbed into her back; Thirteen made a mental note to study up on lekku sign. She was fairly sure that meant something.

“It’s just a bank heist!” Chance insisted, turning back to Saber. “Come on. We screw with the Hutts, we give another agent a good distraction, we all stretch our legs. The boss will make sure everything runs smoothly.”

“Ardun doesn’t always think things through,” Saber muttered, rubbing at the edges of her implants, “and Mother Goddess knows, neither do you or Hunter. The Hutts have an alliance with the Republic here. We could get kicked off the planet for this.”

Chance shrugged, kicking his feet up. “Why? As long as we make it look like a rival gang-”

“Hutts aren’t known for their intelligence,” Thirteen contributed. She and Chance exchanged a secretive smile.

Rubbing her cybernetics even harder, Saber stood up. “Wheel, c’mere, I gotta check your joints.”

Obediently, the droid ambled over to her, and Saber took a pouch off her belt, pulling out mechanical tools.

Chance got up and joined Thirteen on the desk, hopping up and kicking his feet into the empty air.

“I thought you were the mech-head around here,” Thirteen said in a low tone, not wanting Saber to know they were gossiping about her.

“Oh, I can fix up a speeder pretty good, but I couldn’t build a droid,” Chance waved his hand- and when he set it back down, conveniently landed it atop her own. “Saber got Wheel talking after we scavenged his chassis from an Imperial warehouse, installed a new and better AI, and it’s been love ever since. I think he’s the only thing she’s ever given a damn about. She won’t even let us memory-wipe him.”

“... Him?” The droid did not look like a _him_. It looked like a semi-inert pile of metal and bolts.

“Called Wheel an _it_ once,” Chance told her, drawing his hand over his neck in a throat-slitting gesture. He put his hand back down on top of hers once again, curling it around her fingers. “She hit me. Not a good idea.”

The door opened, and everyone looked up at Kothe. Hunter slunk out of the closet, looking chastised and ready to take it out on whoever stumbled into his path.

“Saber, you next,” Kothe gestured her forward.

She stood, leaving her tools out on the table and taking Wheel by the mechanical forearm to lead him in. Kothe glanced over them all, checking on them in true mother-hen style, before closing the door.

Hunter eyed the two of them, sitting together on the desk, Chance’s hand on top of hers. He got that nasty, smug expression on his face again, the one that made Thirteen want to slap him. “I can’t believe you finally found a girl willing to hold your hand, Chance,” he said, his voice oily, “and all it took was one you can _order_ to do it.”

Thirteen held eye contact with him, daring him to keep talking, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Chance flush and look away.

“ _Code word: fall in love with me_ , is that it?” Hunter asked, his voice mocking. “I wonder if it would really work. Hey, Cipher, want to find out?”

“Okay,” Chance hopped down from the desk and ambled over, his body language friendly even as he got nose-to-nose with his coworker. “Hunter, knock it off.”

Squaring his shoulders, Hunter rolled his eyes. “Or what? You can’t order me around like you can your new girlfriend.” But Thirteen noticed that he rocked backwards, keeping just a little out of Chance’s reach.

Hunter didn’t want to be touched. She filed the knowledge away.

“C’mon, Hunter,” Chance’s voice went a little softer as Hunter backed up. He folded his arms, and it looked alien to his usual loose-limbed posture. “You're better than that.”

Eyes narrowing, Hunter’s smirk dropped off his face. Thirteen kept an eye on his shoulders and back- tension rose in every line of his body. But after a moment, in which Chance just stared him down with dark eyes, Hunter scoffed and turned away, pulling out his datapad. He went back to leaning against the wall, and did not look up.

Chance meandered back over, hands in his pockets, and leaned against the desk, his arm brushing her leg.

“Sorry. Hunter’s okay, he just pushes a lot. Once he finds where the boundaries are, he’s cool. You just gotta show him where the line is.”

Thirteen considered this. Her memory flicked through every interaction she’d seen Hunter have with Kothe- getting continually put in his place by the leader of the team. Chance had done it gently, but with a firm compassion; it seemed more effective than Kothe’s barked orders. “Do you know why he's so... confrontational?” She kept her voice soft.

“Cause he was _bottle-fed_ , probably,” Chance didn’t bother. He cupped a hand around his mouth to half-shout his answer in Hunter’s direction, who raised one hand in a rude gesture more commonly found in the Nar Shaddaa slums than in SIS headquarters. Turning back to her, Chance lowered his voice. “He’ll get used to you.”

Thirteen doubted that, but kept it off of her face. “I appreciate this,” she murmured into Chance’s ear, enjoying the way it turned a dark red under her warm breath. “You’re the only one who’s really tried to help me feel a part of this team.”

“It, uh- it’s nothing,” Chance stammered.

The door opened again, and all heads swung towards it to watch Saber storm out, leading Wheel by the forearm like he was a five-year-old in a shopping center instead of a two-meter combat droid.

“Chance,” Kothe called, and the agent in question turned to Thirteen and winked, his cheeks a deep pink, as he pushed off from the desk and was gone.

Saber settled back at the conference table. Hunter didn’t look up from his datapad. The silence buzzed and burned, leaving Thirteen adrift in the middle of a large room.

“Hey, buddy,” Hunter said, his voice friendlier than Thirteen had ever heard it, “can I tinker with your programs for a minute?” Pointedly turning his back on Thirteen, he walked over to the conference table and offered his datapad for Wheel to uplink with. Hunter leaned back against the wall again, leaving Wheel’s hand outstretched and connected to his datapad. Saber knelt down, tapping and twisting bits of Wheel’s knee joints. They worked in a contented silence that encompassed the three of them without touching her.

Thirteen wondered if this was what adolescence felt like. The deliberate exclusion was a little galling. She refused to shift or show discomfort, and sat as still as if she were in a sniper’s perch.

Minutes crawled by, and Thirteen kept her breathing slow and blinking rare, observing Saber, Wheel, and Hunter as though they were targets through her scope. She tried not to allow herself to think anything, but couldn’t help wondering if Chance’s debriefing was taking longer than the other two put together.

Hunter murmured something that made Saber snort a laugh. Wheel’s joints ticked in pleasure as he nodded and swayed along with their laughter. A tender little tableau.

After approximately a thousand years, or five minutes by her internal clock, the door clicked open again. Chance rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish, the blush on his face still fading off.

The others greeted him with noncommittal noises, still focused on Wheel, and Kothe said, “Legate?”

Thirteen twitched, found herself sore from holding her position too long, and then stood, careful not to show her discomfort. She crossed the room with balletic grace, head held high. She didn’t even look at Chance as he passed her, desperate to keep her dignity intact.

After such a queenly exit, stepping into a storage closet felt highly anticlimactic. She closed the door behind her with a quiet _snap_.

Kothe seemed to make himself at home in the tiny space. It couldn’t have been more than three or four meters along each wall, and shelving units with dusty cleaning supplies made it seem even smaller. He leaned back, calm and kingly in the light of the singular bulb hanging from the ceiling.

If he hadn’t thrown a wrench into her original plan, Thirteen thought glumly, this would have been exactly the opportunity she was waiting for.

Instead, she squared her shoulders and awaited her orders.

They didn’t come. Kothe looked her up and down, calculating, and said, “How did you earn your sniper certification?”

Blinking, Thirteen turned her head as though there were someone else in the tiny space to whom he could be talking. “Sir?”

She told herself that being caught off-balance was permissible. The character she was playing- Legate, the traitor Legate, the leashed Imperial Legate who was not herself- would endear Kothe to her by being deadly competent in the field and sweetly helpless outside of action. It was alright that he surprised her so much. It would help with the act.

“What little Chance managed to get of your file says that you were primarily an undercover agent,” Kothe explained, absently poking at an obsolete mouse droid on the shelf, “but you have a sniper certification as well. I’m curious as to why that would be a skill set Intelligence would want to give you.”

“I- as the top in my class, I was given the opportunity to develop a secondary skill set,” Thirteen explained, leaving out the fact that this was the Ascendancy and not Intelligence, “my choices were medical training or sniping, and, well- I’ve always been better with mathematics than with....” She made a face. “Squishy bits.”

Kothe snorted. “Healing isn’t glamorous. Gotta be willing to get your hands dirty in new and exciting ways; in that sense, it’s a lot like spy work.”

“Breaking people is easier than putting them back together,” Thirteen said, sounding irreverent but realizing halfway through the sentence how her words could apply to herself. She turned her face away.

From his solemn silence, Kothe also took the implication. He let the words hang, almost out of respect, and then nodded. “You’re right,” he said, and then shook himself. “I don’t mean to get philosophical on you.”

“I’m getting the sense that you’ll turn anything into a moral lecture, Sir,” Thirteen said, smiling and making it sound as though she were teasing him for being too serious instead of calling him a hypocrite.

“Don’t make me write you up,” Kothe threatened with a soft laugh.

 _Write me up to whom?_ Thirteen wondered, but didn’t ask.

“We’re going to make use of your sniper talents for this job,” Kothe continued, stopping his tinkering with the mouse droid to turn back to her. “I’m going to have you set up in the building across from the bank with a scope. No gun, nothing needs shooting, but you get to play mission control and make sure everyone is where they need to be.”

“I can do that,” Thirteen nodded, but narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t Chance typically mission control?”

Kothe waved his hand. “Don’t worry about Chance. I’ll have everything taken care of.”

“Yes, sir.” Smiling, Thirteen thought to herself that Kothe believed he had everything much more under control than he really did.

Clapping, clasping his hands together and stretching, Kothe gestured to the door. “You’re good to go. Tell the other kids that we’re going to start running drills once I have my datawork filed,” he said, picking up a datapad from the shelf.

Thirteen wondered why he would prefer to do his work in a storage closet when the meeting-room was right there, but as they stopped speaking and she turned her ear to the door, she heard the commotion of three people arguing, furiously low voices that were forgetting to whisper in their fervor.

_“She’s an Imperial. You cannot trust a god-damn turncoat,”_

_“People make mistakes,”_ Chance’s voice begged, _“remember Dorne? Sometimes people change, sometimes people realize-”_

 _“If you get knifed in your sleep, I am going to say_ I told you so _a million fucking times,”_

 _“Be very, very careful. That good nature of yours is gonna get you into more trouble than it’s worth if you don’t learn to stop sticking your neck out for people,”_ Saber’s voice turned snide and nasty, _“especially Imp assassins and glorified whores.”_

Thirteen flinched. Her hand froze on the knob.

She told herself that she didn’t care what these people thought of her. That it didn’t matter. She was doing her best to kill them, after all. But she didn’t really.... Chance was a good man. Foolish, but good. Thirteen felt the disdain for him that all con artists felt for their targets, certainly, but she realized that there was affection there for him as well.

Kothe’s hand landed on her shoulder. “I know it’s hard,” his low voice rumbled through her. “It’ll get easier.”

_“Don’t call her that!”_

_“What do you think she’s trained to do, Chance? She’s not just here to hold your hand,”_

“Don’t think about it,” Kothe advised, patting her on the back a little too hard for comfort. “Just do it.”

As her hand twisted on the doorknob, Thirteen thought that had to be the least helpful advice she’d ever heard.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want more chapters, please pester me.
> 
> If you like my OC, please give her hair pets and tell me I'm a monster.
> 
> If you think my OC is a Mary Sue, you're valid, but I don't want you in my playhouse and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.


End file.
